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Published: June 14th 2017
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Geo: 48.1669, 7.29728
After the big drive, and three countries yesterday, we decided to take it very easy this morning. We stayed in our little village (one main street and half a dozen side streets), following the map that the very kind lady in the tourist office gave us (she even rang our hostess for us last night when we arrived, rather than direct us to where there was a public phone and a phone card). The town is very old, with most of the buildings being medieval, and the remains of the walls and towers adding to the charm. The vines are just outside the town walls – you can see them at the edges of the village streets, and we also went for a walk amongst the vines for a lovely view back into town. We wandered in and out of the little shops, selling toy storks (the symbol of the Alsace) the pottery cases for the koepelhoff (I'll have to check the spelling), and pretty tablecloths all red and white. The wonderful smell of gingerbread (made with heaps of honey, so very different to what we tasted in Grasmere in the Lakes) and bretzels (like a pretzel but more
like a soft dough, but they really do call them bretzels) and coconut macaroons filled the streets too! Tom indulged in his new favourite – crepes with sugar, Matt tried a bretzel with ham and cheese and Georgia had the biggest choc mint icecream in the world! But, as the kids were tired (so were their parents!) we all came back for a restful sleep in the middle of the day.
In the afternoon, we went exploring other little towns in the vicinity. Within 15 mins drive (it would be a lovely walk through the vines, when the kids are older) there were 10 little villages – all very cute but we were biased to our own beautiful Riquewihr! In Ribeauville (a slightly larger village) we were thrilled to see storks nesting in crown-like nests around the town, and we battled with our lack of French to buy Matt some night time pull-ups. The tourist information office had given us little pamphlets of self-guided walks around the villages, which were the right amount of detail for us all – we really just wandered and looked at the half timbered houses and enjoyed the atmosphere. The only stressful thing was that this
village was semi-pedestrianised, but with a single lane of traffic passing through the main street, at typical French speed! Kept us and the kids on our toes! There were three ruined castles visibile at the end of the town, but we were told that the walk to them was about 2 hours, with at least 1' hour of steep climbing – to much for little legs at 4pm!
We then headed to Hunawihr, a village that (like our little Riquewihr) has been proclaimed by the French government to be one of the most beautiful villages in France. Well, don't know what they were using as criteria, but – we couldn't see how Hunawihr could have qualified – maybe we missed the pretty bits but the village is only two streets wide! It does have an extremely pretty church situated in the middle of the vines – and the photos of the inside of the church looked nice too, but at 6pm, it was closed – but he rest of the town was just normal – not outstanding. But we did find a restaurant (where we couldn't read anything on the menu) for dinner – just another excitement, especially when everyone
else speaks at least two languages( French & German) and we only speak one! We knew that Steven's meal was a rabbit stew, but were a little stressed about what mine would be – it was described in French as faux fillet grille (so I'm thinking something FAKE???) but the German translation underneath was something like "reindeer-fleisch" – Mummy was enjoying it but was a little concerned that I was eating Bambi! It was delicious, and we were quite disappointed to learn that it was the French word for sirloin! (I reckon we have broadened the horizons of the kids, gastronomically, when the next day, G says ”Daddy, can I try some of what you are eating, but do I even WANT to know what animal it is tonight?!” It was chicken!)
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